The 3-Hour Diet

The 3-Hour Diet is the follow-up from Jorge Cruise -- the fitness guru who pioneered the 8 Minutes in the Morning workout program for weight loss. Though he's not a nutrition expert, Cruise speaks from his experience of being overweight. With his diet, Cruise advocates a strict timeline of when and what you should eat. Essentially, there are three rules you must follow: Eat breakfast within one hour of getting up, eat every three hours, and stop eating three hours before bed.

Why eat every three hours? Cruise claims that if you don't, you'll turn on your body's starvation protection mechanism (SPM). When that happens, your body conserves fat and burns muscle to help you survive, thus slowing your metabolism. By eating every three hours, you turn off your SPM and rev your metabolism. You also increase your energy levels, prevent binges and reduce the stress hormone cortisol, which Cruise says is linked to belly fat.

What's more, you don't have to exercise (it's optional), nor do you have to abandon your favorite foods for this diet to work. For instance, many of your top splurge foods are included in the list of snack options (i.e. a small candy bar, seven chocolate-covered almonds, or 15 to 20 potato chips).

While many nutrition experts do advocate eating every few hours to keep the metabolism ticking, there's no consensus about how many hours should pass between each meal so Cruise's three hours is somewhat arbitrary. (To his credit, though, he does say that if you're off by 15 minutes or so, that's okay.) Plus, snacking between meals -- you'll be eating about a 100-calorie snack between your main meals -- could be detrimental for some individuals, especially those who ignore his advice on portion sizes and overeat. The rigid eating schedule Cruise sets might also be impractical for some people, including individuals who work late and have to eat late or close to bedtime. On the flip side, though, it could help others who let hours pass between meals and then binge because they're so hungry. And although losing belly fat is certainly a desirable goal, there's no guarantee that any diet will shed belly fat first, especially if you're not exercising.